July 31, 2010

Kenny Williams explains his attempt to land Manny Ramirez

Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti spoke in generalities of how the White Sox contacted him on Friday about the mercurial outfielder.

“We got a call from one club, and they offered us a very low dollar figure with no player attached to it,” Colletti said. “We didn’t start it and we didn’t float his name. One team came forward, and I’m not sure what they were trying to accomplish.”

That explanation was provided by Williams on Saturday.

Impact players were the target for the White Sox, players who could move them up a notch in competing for a World Series title. Ramirez didn’t work out, nor did the other pursuits, but Williams will move forward from a position of strength.

“All I can say is, if we felt there were any impact players on the market, we were going to go after them,” Williams said. “We are strong enough as we are and everything fits together in such a way that the only thing we were going to add would be something of an impact guy.

“I’ll be honest. I was really optimistic on a couple of fronts that we would be able to add to this team without subtracting anything and unfortunately everything that presented itself over the last number of weeks, with the exception of the Edwin Jackson thing, just didn’t. It was destructive to what we were trying to do as a ballclub and it would have taken too much from what’s already on the field.”